The experience of participating in the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy was a fascinating and innovative methodology for developing my understanding and collaborating with others. At our very first meeting, we were asked to express our understanding of digital literacy in brief reflection. The following is a copy of my personal statement:
I believe digital literacy is an evolving medium that engages nearly all cognitive functions. The emerging behaviors of people of all backgrounds will be profoundly affected by the power to transit ideas, methods, and emotions through non-analog means.
Digital literacy is the foundation of the emerging Information Age where interconnected behaviors will impact civilization with broader application that we have seen in the past few millennia. The empowerment of technology to enhance communication and collaboration will grow exponentially and drive new practices for how we live, work, and grow.
We cannot forget the impact of social class, culture, and accessibility to those who are beginning, emerging, or lacking resources to participate in the global network. Societies will change, for better or worse, and our future will be determined by touchstones that are not yet visible.
I believe that digital literacy is a necessary evolvement of our era and one that will impact all people, nature, and the evolution of mankind. We will accept this progress with both wonder and fear, collectively and blindly. Our future will be dependent on our embrace of digital literacy and will be significantly altered by its impact.
Motivations
On the evening of our first day, we were asked to consider our motivations for learning more about digital literacy. The activity provided insight into our personal and professional values but also gave us common ground for connecting with our future partners. After consideration, I believed that I was a Tastemaker, because I welcomed a variety of learning challenges and diversity. I wanted my to students to have "exposure to a wide variety of texts, ideas, people and experiences that deepen their understanding of history, art, the sciences and society." During this session, I was introduced to Myriam Darmoni, who became a close friend by the end of the week. As part of my presentation of the cool tool, Infogr.am, I produced the following infographics using the data collected from most participants at the Institute:
Surprisingly, I found that I changed somewhat throughout the week. In the closing reflection activities, I completed the survey regarding these same qualifiers and discovered that I leaned more towards being a Demystifier. I enjoyed the opportunities to help students actually unlock the knowledge rather than providing only the opportunities to access it.
Design Studio and Project-based Inquiry Project
The hallmark assignment, work in a triad to complete an instructional plan for a curriculum unit with digital literacy, provided a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of cultural awareness and embedding technology into a challenging topic. Our group focused on cultural awareness and methods for exploring how we become active participants in a global society. In fulfillment of of the EDC 586 course projects, parts one through five, I have enhanced our work from the institute and updated our wiki to reflect our progress in the weeks since we met:
In addition to the sessions I attended, I had a thoroughly engaging experience with participants at my own Cool Tool session using Infogr.am. I am proud to be able to share the resources demonstrated during this session and provide the dynamic wiki of instructions.
1. The Digital Literacy institute helped to bridge several genres of literacy for me while helping me to attain a new understand of the curriculum application process. I am fondest of media-based literacy, instruction in the design of photography and film that tells a story, and I am passionate about data literacy. The facilitators at this institute provide valuable insight in understanding the fundamental skills needed to bridge learners with the instructional goals. For instance, I was previously aware of the storyboarding process in film, yet I was surprised to learn that that the “pitch” process for a storyboard did more to engage author’s purpose than simply outline the story. Jonathan Friesem’s workshop on filmmaking drew attention to the value of context in the pre-production stages and the importance of making appropriate selections for focusing an audience’s attention on the meaning. Like I would expect in a traditional text, where the writer develops a sequence of evidence to support a thesis, the pre-production plan insures that the producers have a clear outline of the director’s vision. This example is just of the occasions where I reflected on the importance of aligning traditional literacy practices (such as pre-writing) to a digital medium with greater insight.
2.Digital literacy could be defined as the process of encoding and decoding non-traditional texts in a collaborative, dynamic method. The key adjectives are as follows: a. Encoding/decoding: as in literacy skills, the “programming” of a digital artifact requires cognitive input and out that harnesses multiple neurological processes in a practical fashion. b. Collaborative: the texts should be built by many and distributed to the community. The key to digital literacy is the ability to network ideas and to develop understanding through partnerships. c. Dynamic: Unlike traditional text that exists only in print, dynamic text allows for an ever-changing or interconnected relationship with the audience. Words can be defined through hyperlinking, statements can be revised in real-time, and relationships to other media can be embedded in the text for accessibility, clarity, and efficiency.
To help clarify my professional development, I have created a brief Storify presentation that captures those "in the moment" and post-observations that developed my learning. As you see, I found that collaboration was a fundamental principle in my new definition of digital literacy. In my introductory statement, I noted that "the [power] of technology to enhance communication and collaboration will grow exponentially and derive new practices for how we live, work, and grow." I support this statement with the evidence that follows:
If the Storify site is down, you can access the document in landscape form by clicking on the following document:
3. Students are accessing information with new strategies built on skills that went unchanged for several decades Thus, I know that the pedagogy of my instruction will continue to change to meet these shifts, just as we continue to adapt in this Information Age. Specifically, I want to support students in the deconstruction of data literacy and build their application of skills related to data collection, evaluation, and presentation. Students are accessing information that is culled from biased data, often with a marketing or political skew, and failing to critically analyze the reliability of the source. Many of the projects my students have created are focused on design elements instead of context or criteria. Therefore, I will apply a lot of the instructional skills from this institute towards the decoding process of data, in a fashion that follows strategies employed in the language arts. I will treat the programming of information with the same methodology used to examine author’s purpose. My instruction will insure that the listening and speaking skills from traditional literacy instruction are established in the social and instructional conversations that students engage in networking environments. I hope that my curriculum will reflect the best hopes for future instructional needs and encourage students to use their full potential when engaging technology.
4. Digital literacies has changed our educational, personal, and professional environments as we become more active participants in a global network. Our teaching practices and academic content rely on strong collaboration, clear cross-cultural communication, and consistent methodology for an active learning environment. I believe that educators in particular, should be acutely aware of the information used to develop their curriculum and shared by their community. The sharing of information, accurate or not, appropriate or biased, has developed an exponential rate in the last two decades and will only continue to grow. Many teachers are expected to use data-driven analyses of student progress in their career growth plans. Often, the data is gathered and disseminated by digital means with little prior knowledge of the methodology. I believe educators need appropriate training in the process of reading, collecting, and sharing data as a form of digital literacy to highly efficient and critically informed. Through data-driven dialogue instruction, I hope to continue to educate myself and fellow colleagues in the best practices for meeting this goal.
5.Many of the educators in the cohort of the summer institute expressed a concern about censorship and safety when accessing information technology. In both U.S. and Canadian school systems, the need for a policy regarding appropriate instructional use of technology has generated a lot of discussion. The key hope is that students can have unrestricted access to information that will support learning but in an environment that is healthy, safe, and appropriate for all learners. I was fortunate that I could share what I believe is a promising practice that my district will introduce in the next academic year. Our community has agreed to implement a “responsible use” policy that was developed by educators, administrators, parents, students, and community members. The expectation of the policy is to address the concern that students should be able to use their own devices and with few limitations, as long as the process does not interfere with quality instruction, cause harm or criminal intent, and serves as an appropriate strategy for increasing learning. Despite the many perceived obstacles, such as distraction with social media and bandwidth regulation, the desire to provide students with an opportunity to make mature decisions that engage learning is a fundamentally stronger rationale for supporting the policy. I am anxious to see how my students can use tools and processes that require proficiency in digital literacy with constructivist support. I hope that my new knowledge will encourage students to make solid choices about media that also address their learning and academic growth.
6. In examining the texts provided, I formed the following insights in each category:
Digital Literacies in Context
Doug Rushkoff’s writings were a major motivation for participating in this institute. I had read his previous texts and was glad to have an opportunity to hear his insights and read his newest text simultaneously. I am particularly impressed by his “digiphrenia” insights where he discusses the active and passive flow of data in our lives. I believe that our blindness to the collection and distribution of our personal data will be a civil rights issue in this new century. Ironically, I was completing “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot where the title character was robbed of her cells for medical research. The parallel between “who owns my tissue/blood” and “who owns my digital footprint” have a striking similarity.
Generating Questions
Grant Wiggins’ work has been impactful in my curriculum development (Understanding by Design, co-authored with Jay McTighe) and his work in guided inquiry continues to be a focus on literacy development in my classroom. I was very interested in the essential question about “Who Sees and Who is Blind?” because of my study of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. So often, we prize the need to obtain the information before we question the consequences. I have always enjoyed magic, but I do wish to learn how they perform every illusion. The value of their performance, the creativity and wonder of the illusion, and the relationship between the magician and the audience is so exhilarating that I would lose interest if all was revealed. That does not mean I would not inquiry about possible methods, but I would want to deduce the process and participate in the inquiry rather than simply being told the secret. The discovery process is why generating questions and engaging through inquiry is so important to the constructivist pedagogy that I aspire to provide students.
Instructional Strategies
Hiller Spires and I had a wonderful conversation about multimodal literacies and the work that I was doing with infographics. One of the challenges she noted for educators was the difficulty of relinquishing the “stand and deliver” method of teaching. The educator as a facilitator of learning was encouraged to hand over responsibility to students with appropriate guidance and reinforcement. Many of my fellow educators are fascinated by the “flipped classroom” environment and do not realize the ease of embedding challenging instructional strategies into an independent learning opportunity. Thus, her written pedagogy connected me back to Wiggins’ inquiry process and the value of supporting students towards synthesis of information rather than recall and retell.
Next Steps
Renee Hobbs white paper outlines that complete process for engaging the pedagogy described in her book, “Digital and Media Literacy, Connecting Culture and Classroom.” I began to connect a lot of her suggestions on the youth community involvement as we visit the AS220 labs in Providence. Both the young and the veteran learner were given space and support to unlock creativity in a method that was nearly limitless. I was impressed by local adolescents who were engaged in sound engineering and computer programming with no instructional background or involvement of public schools. I believe that Hobbs’ text empowered me to want to volunteer my knowledge in helping more students achieve their full creative potential.
These readings are highly engaging selections for the work that I hope to pursue and research. As a passionate erudite of data literacy, I found the readings fascinating in better understanding the neurodevelopmental strategies that learners engage when processing information.
7. Undoubtedly, the institute left me hungry for more opportunities to explore areas that I am interested in researching in data. However, I feel strongly that I need to be better equipped to understanding programming and add a language to my expertise. I was extremely motivated by the Code Academy workshop and the change to truly start the process of designing my own applications. I would love to have had an opportunity to work with a facilitator or programmer to learn more about the best language for my needs. Though I am working on the course for Python, I am also interested in knowing more about the statistical programming tool known as R. I believe programming as a topic, would require at least another day of dialogue and learning and I would have like to develop an application for our Design Studio.
Conclusion
The week long journey and adventure that was the 2013 Summer Institute in Digital Literacy was exhausting, exhilarating, and satisfying in ways that defy text. I am especially thankful for the new partnerships and friends that I made and the many exciting opportunities we had to collaborate together. I look forward to continuing our journey through social media, future travels, and hopefully another institute in the years to come.
My Dear Ocean Club Friends: Diane Watt, Myriam Darmoni, Laura Morrison, Margaret Hagood
Introduction
The experience of participating in the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy was a fascinating and innovative methodology for developing my understanding and collaborating with others. At our very first meeting, we were asked to express our understanding of digital literacy in brief reflection. The following is a copy of my personal statement:
I believe digital literacy is an evolving medium that engages nearly all cognitive functions. The emerging behaviors of people of all backgrounds will be profoundly affected by the power to transit ideas, methods, and emotions through non-analog means.
Digital literacy is the foundation of the emerging Information Age where interconnected behaviors will impact civilization with broader application that we have seen in the past few millennia. The empowerment of technology to enhance communication and collaboration will grow exponentially and drive new practices for how we live, work, and grow.
We cannot forget the impact of social class, culture, and accessibility to those who are beginning, emerging, or lacking resources to participate in the global network. Societies will change, for better or worse, and our future will be determined by touchstones that are not yet visible.
I believe that digital literacy is a necessary evolvement of our era and one that will impact all people, nature, and the evolution of mankind. We will accept this progress with both wonder and fear, collectively and blindly. Our future will be dependent on our embrace of digital literacy and will be significantly altered by its impact.
Motivations
On the evening of our first day, we were asked to consider our motivations for learning more about digital literacy. The activity provided insight into our personal and professional values but also gave us common ground for connecting with our future partners. After consideration, I believed that I was a Tastemaker, because I welcomed a variety of learning challenges and diversity. I wanted my to students to have "exposure to a wide variety of texts, ideas, people and experiences that deepen their understanding of history, art, the sciences and society." During this session, I was introduced to Myriam Darmoni, who became a close friend by the end of the week. As part of my presentation of the cool tool, Infogr.am, I produced the following infographics using the data collected from most participants at the Institute:
Surprisingly, I found that I changed somewhat throughout the week. In the closing reflection activities, I completed the survey regarding these same qualifiers and discovered that I leaned more towards being a Demystifier. I enjoyed the opportunities to help students actually unlock the knowledge rather than providing only the opportunities to access it.
Design Studio and Project-based Inquiry Project
The hallmark assignment, work in a triad to complete an instructional plan for a curriculum unit with digital literacy, provided a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of cultural awareness and embedding technology into a challenging topic. Our group focused on cultural awareness and methods for exploring how we become active participants in a global society. In fulfillment of of the EDC 586 course projects, parts one through five, I have enhanced our work from the institute and updated our wiki to reflect our progress in the weeks since we met:
Project-based Inquiry Production Plan
Essential Question: How can we foster a climate of acceptance and intercultural understanding?Cool Tools Review and Application Plan
In addition to the sessions I attended, I had a thoroughly engaging experience with participants at my own Cool Tool session using Infogr.am. I am proud to be able to share the resources demonstrated during this session and provide the dynamic wiki of instructions.
VIsualizing the Big Picture, Creating Infographics with Infogr.am
Seven Question Reflection
1. The Digital Literacy institute helped to bridge several genres of literacy for me while helping me to attain a new understand of the curriculum application process. I am fondest of media-based literacy, instruction in the design of photography and film that tells a story, and I am passionate about data literacy. The facilitators at this institute provide valuable insight in understanding the fundamental skills needed to bridge learners with the instructional goals. For instance, I was previously aware of the storyboarding process in film, yet I was surprised to learn that that the “pitch” process for a storyboard did more to engage author’s purpose than simply outline the story. Jonathan Friesem’s workshop on filmmaking drew attention to the value of context in the pre-production stages and the importance of making appropriate selections for focusing an audience’s attention on the meaning. Like I would expect in a traditional text, where the writer develops a sequence of evidence to support a thesis, the pre-production plan insures that the producers have a clear outline of the director’s vision. This example is just of the occasions where I reflected on the importance of aligning traditional literacy practices (such as pre-writing) to a digital medium with greater insight.
2. Digital literacy could be defined as the process of encoding and decoding non-traditional texts in a collaborative, dynamic method. The key adjectives are as follows:
a. Encoding/decoding: as in literacy skills, the “programming” of a digital artifact requires cognitive input and out that harnesses multiple neurological processes in a practical fashion.
b. Collaborative: the texts should be built by many and distributed to the community. The key to digital literacy is the ability to network ideas and to develop understanding through partnerships.
c. Dynamic: Unlike traditional text that exists only in print, dynamic text allows for an ever-changing or interconnected relationship with the audience. Words can be defined through hyperlinking,
statements can be revised in real-time, and relationships to other media can be embedded in the text for accessibility, clarity, and efficiency.
To help clarify my professional development, I have created a brief Storify presentation that captures those "in the moment" and post-observations that developed my learning. As you see, I found that collaboration was a fundamental principle in my new definition of digital literacy. In my introductory statement, I noted that "the [power] of technology to enhance communication and collaboration will grow exponentially and derive new practices for how we live, work, and grow." I support this statement with the evidence that follows:
If the Storify site is down, you can access the document in landscape form by clicking on the following document:
3. Students are accessing information with new strategies built on skills that went unchanged for several decades Thus, I know that the pedagogy of my instruction will continue to change to meet these shifts, just as we continue to adapt in this Information Age. Specifically, I want to support students in the deconstruction of data literacy and build their application of skills related to data collection, evaluation, and presentation. Students are accessing information that is culled from biased data, often with a marketing or political skew, and failing to critically analyze the reliability of the source. Many of the projects my students have created are focused on design elements instead of context or criteria. Therefore, I will apply a lot of the instructional skills from this institute towards the decoding process of data, in a fashion that follows strategies employed in the language arts. I will treat the programming of information with the same methodology used to examine author’s purpose. My instruction will insure that the listening and speaking skills from traditional literacy instruction are established in the social and instructional conversations that students engage in networking environments. I hope that my curriculum will reflect the best hopes for future instructional needs and encourage students to use their full potential when engaging technology.
4. Digital literacies has changed our educational, personal, and professional environments as we become more active participants in a global network. Our teaching practices and academic content rely on strong collaboration, clear cross-cultural communication, and consistent methodology for an active learning environment. I believe that educators in particular, should be acutely aware of the information used to develop their curriculum and shared by their community. The sharing of information, accurate or not, appropriate or biased, has developed an exponential rate in the last two decades and will only continue to grow. Many teachers are expected to use data-driven analyses of student progress in their career growth plans. Often, the data is gathered and disseminated by digital means with little prior knowledge of the methodology. I believe educators need appropriate training in the process of reading, collecting, and sharing data as a form of digital literacy to highly efficient and critically informed. Through data-driven dialogue instruction, I hope to continue to educate myself and fellow colleagues in the best practices for meeting this goal.
5. Many of the educators in the cohort of the summer institute expressed a concern about censorship and safety when accessing information technology. In both U.S. and Canadian school systems, the need for a policy regarding appropriate instructional use of technology has generated a lot of discussion. The key hope is that students can have unrestricted access to information that will support learning but in an environment that is healthy, safe, and appropriate for all learners. I was fortunate that I could share what I believe is a promising practice that my district will introduce in the next academic year. Our community has agreed to implement a “responsible use” policy that was developed by educators, administrators, parents, students, and community members. The expectation of the policy is to address the concern that students should be able to use their own devices and with few limitations, as long as the process does not interfere with quality instruction, cause harm or criminal intent, and serves as an appropriate strategy for increasing learning. Despite the many perceived obstacles, such as distraction with social media and bandwidth regulation, the desire to provide students with an opportunity to make mature decisions that engage learning is a fundamentally stronger rationale for supporting the policy. I am anxious to see how my students can use tools and processes that require proficiency in digital literacy with constructivist support. I hope that my new knowledge will encourage students to make solid choices about media that also address their learning and academic growth.
6. In examining the texts provided, I formed the following insights in each category:
Digital Literacies in Context
Doug Rushkoff’s writings were a major motivation for participating in this institute. I had read his previous texts and was glad to have an opportunity to hear his insights and read his newest text simultaneously. I am particularly impressed by his “digiphrenia” insights where he discusses the active and passive flow of data in our lives. I believe that our blindness to the collection and distribution of our personal data will be a civil rights issue in this new century. Ironically, I was completing “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot where the title character was robbed of her cells for medical research. The parallel between “who owns my tissue/blood” and “who owns my digital footprint” have a striking similarity.
Generating Questions
Grant Wiggins’ work has been impactful in my curriculum development (Understanding by Design, co-authored with Jay McTighe) and his work in guided inquiry continues to be a focus on literacy development in my classroom. I was very interested in the essential question about “Who Sees and Who is Blind?” because of my study of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. So often, we prize the need to obtain the information before we question the consequences. I have always enjoyed magic, but I do wish to learn how they perform every illusion. The value of their performance, the creativity and wonder of the illusion, and the relationship between the magician and the audience is so exhilarating that I would lose interest if all was revealed. That does not mean I would not inquiry about possible methods, but I would want to deduce the process and participate in the inquiry rather than simply being told the secret. The discovery process is why generating questions and engaging through inquiry is so important to the constructivist pedagogy that I aspire to provide students.
Instructional Strategies
Hiller Spires and I had a wonderful conversation about multimodal literacies and the work that I was doing with infographics. One of the challenges she noted for educators was the difficulty of relinquishing the “stand and deliver” method of teaching. The educator as a facilitator of learning was encouraged to hand over responsibility to students with appropriate guidance and reinforcement. Many of my fellow educators are fascinated by the “flipped classroom” environment and do not realize the ease of embedding challenging instructional strategies into an independent learning opportunity. Thus, her written pedagogy connected me back to Wiggins’ inquiry process and the value of supporting students towards synthesis of information rather than recall and retell.
Next Steps
Renee Hobbs white paper outlines that complete process for engaging the pedagogy described in her book, “Digital and Media Literacy, Connecting Culture and Classroom.” I began to connect a lot of her suggestions on the youth community involvement as we visit the AS220 labs in Providence. Both the young and the veteran learner were given space and support to unlock creativity in a method that was nearly limitless. I was impressed by local adolescents who were engaged in sound engineering and computer programming with no instructional background or involvement of public schools. I believe that Hobbs’ text empowered me to want to volunteer my knowledge in helping more students achieve their full creative potential.
These readings are highly engaging selections for the work that I hope to pursue and research. As a passionate erudite of data literacy, I found the readings fascinating in better understanding the neurodevelopmental strategies that learners engage when processing information.
7. Undoubtedly, the institute left me hungry for more opportunities to explore areas that I am interested in researching in data. However, I feel strongly that I need to be better equipped to understanding programming and add a language to my expertise. I was extremely motivated by the Code Academy workshop and the change to truly start the process of designing my own applications. I would love to have had an opportunity to work with a facilitator or programmer to learn more about the best language for my needs. Though I am working on the course for Python, I am also interested in knowing more about the statistical programming tool known as R. I believe programming as a topic, would require at least another day of dialogue and learning and I would have like to develop an application for our Design Studio.
Conclusion
The week long journey and adventure that was the 2013 Summer Institute in Digital Literacy was exhausting, exhilarating, and satisfying in ways that defy text. I am especially thankful for the new partnerships and friends that I made and the many exciting opportunities we had to collaborate together. I look forward to continuing our journey through social media, future travels, and hopefully another institute in the years to come.